


your love is my turning page

by ediblemomo (junnir)



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: 2yeon as bffs, F/F, squint for jitzu, squint for mihyo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 20:23:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14576937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junnir/pseuds/ediblemomo
Summary: sometimes, you find a home in the unlikeliest of places.(nayeon's fresh out of a break-up. mina's a single mother who runs a resort.)





	your love is my turning page

**Author's Note:**

> title from turning page by sleeping at last
> 
> [companion playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/junnir/playlist/6dpxBNe7JPO7blTfTiSHE4?si=nFCjcaGJQVS1t1MseX-r_w)

The waves crash messily against the shore, only coming together as one when they recede back into the bigger, bolder body of water. The two o’clock ferry rolls up to the pier, bringing with it a few dozens of curious-eyed tourists clamouring for a week off from their real lives.

One of them is just here to get a fresh start. And a fresh start is what she’ll get, whether that involves three soaks in the ocean or that and seven rounds of shots. She’s not a quitter, no; she’s more like a try-until-she-doesn’t-have-to type of person.

She wakes up from a short nap to find that the ferry has finally docked, and trudges off the ship with a backpack hanging lazily off her worn-out shoulders.

On the other side of town, the news of the two o’clock arrival has just awoken everyone from their midday slumber. One of them especially, stands from her seat and stretches her fatigue away. 

They couldn’t have been further apart, or more different than they already were, but they had something in common still.

For the both of them, things have only just begun.

=====

It’s easy to pretend like she’s one of them, just another eager traveller here for a vacation, and not who she really is — a walking victim of heartbreak trying to hide that she had, in actual fact, also been the culprit to blame for it. (“It was a messy break-up” is the long and short of it.)

She watches them with heavily-lidded eyes, as their touristy shoulders hike higher and higher up, inch by inch, with each new sight they stroll past. She’s pretended to be many kinds of people before, but this tourist type could possibly be the easiest thus far. It’s easy — just pretend she’s seeing everything and anything for the very first time in her life. As if she hasn’t already been to the beach enough times, as if she hasn’t been seeing baby blue clouds and green grass all her life. As if this is all new to her. Just pretend, that’s all she has to do. 

She watches the road signs instead of the people, and eventually finds her way to the beachside resort she had booked her stay at just less than a week ago. She remembers defiantly clicking her way through the booking sites as Jeongyeon, her one and only sane and level-headed best friend, screamed her name repeatedly, asking her to calm down and think a little before whisking herself away to escape reality. It had been easier tuning Jeongyeon out when her mind had something else to focus on, like making this week’s getaway as perfect as possible.

It isn’t one of the flashiest resorts, nor was it double-thumbs-up approved by the travel agencies. But it did boast a quiescent and isolated location, and Nayeon thinks that that’s all she really needed.

And a bed. That’s also something she really needed and could use right about now. The ferry ride had been exhausting mostly because the waters had been rough, and they made her woozy, yet not nearly enough to knock her out into a good sleep.

The resort looked mighty welcoming, the thoughts of warm abode and warmer sheets already running wild in her head. She drags herself up the stairs and to the front desk, and pretty much collapses on the glass top. The front desk had been manned by a female figure, whose back was to Nayeon when her body landed atop the glass surface.

“I’m here to check in,” Nayeon mumbles, the coolness from the glass top already lulling her into further lethargy.

The front desk lady spins around, and the first thing Nayeon registers is the constellation formed by the tiny moles that dot her face.

The next thing she registers is how absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful the girl looks, with a face Nayeon feels she could love for the rest of her life.

The last thing she registers is that this is probably just her exhaustion and freshly-broken heart speaking.

Her eyes flutter shut as the girl focuses on her, her round hazels staring down into hers.

“Miss?”

“Nayeon,” she manages to mumble in response.

When she feels a cold hand land on hers, things start coming into focus, hitting her all at once. Her eyes open with a start, and she straightens her body with a jolt.

That gaze is warm and all-consuming, and it takes everything in her not to melt under those hazels boring into hers.

“Are you okay?” Her voice is gentle and skips across the brainwaves in Nayeon’s head.

_No, you’re charming as hell and I’m charmed. As hell._

“Um, yeah. Sorry about that.”

The girl smiles, a tiny giggle spilling from her lips, and Nayeon feels her walls come down.

“You look really tired. Must’ve been quite a ride.”

“Yeah,” Nayeon says, every vestige of her falling, sinking, melting, coming apart at this first encounter. “Quite a ride.”

Only then does the girl finally take her hand off of Nayeon’s, and she can’t help but feel that she’s missing something now.

=====

Her room overlooks the shore, with white, golden sand painting much of the landscape beyond her two doors.

It’s small and cosy, just right for the solo traveller that she is. She lets her backpack slide to the floor the moment she enters and takes a moment to marvel at the sight before she remembers that the girl from the front desk is still standing in her doorway.

She’s sobered up a little by now, the sheltered pathways of the resort having blocked out some of the merciless sun that had been frying up her central nervous system earlier on.

It had been a quiet two-minute walk to her room, with the front desk girl leading and Nayeon following behind, her steps subconsciously coming in sync with the girl walking in front.

“I hope you like your room, Miss Nayeon,” the girl says, her honeysuckle voice only serving to fry Nayeon’s brains again, the same way the sun had earlier.

“Nayeon,” she replies in a rush, then calms a little. “Uh, just… Nayeon will do.”

The girl looks a little befuddled at Nayeon’s request, then catches herself and nods slightly. “We don’t usually address our guests by their first names,” she responds, lips curling up cheekily at the edges.

Something in her clicks and snaps. Emboldened by the impromptu nature of this entire adventure, she shrugs and flashes her brightest smile. “Well we could be friends,” and that’s how she fails once again to stop herself from saying something her brain didn’t give her the permission to.

Something _ugly_ in her clicks and snaps, and for a moment there she’s transported back to the memory of how she landed herself in this temporary escape from reality. Her brain reminds her that this unfiltered manner of speech is the exact thing that caused her latest break-up, sending a three-year relationship down the drain like it hadn’t been much of anything to begin with.

The nightmare fuel disappears when the front desk girl laughs, just a little louder than her previous giggle, and Nayeon craves for more.

“I guess we could,” the girl returns in kind.

Her hand is extended in the space between Nayeon and her, and though Nayeon’s ensuing grip is gentle, there’s a slight something more there that only she is aware of – that she’s holding on for dear life.

“Mina.”

Nayeon’s grip tightens by the slightest.

“That’s a beautiful name.”

She means it.

=====

She wakes up a couple hours later, finding that the sun has let up enough for her to head out on a short stroll by the beach.

The bed is soft to the touch, so soft that immediately after front desk girl – _Mina_ – had left, she had knocked out right after she plopped herself down.

She starts to think that the entire exchange earlier had been nothing but a lucid dream, a beautiful one at that, but quickly and thankfully gets proven wrong by the little note she sees left on her dressing table.

It’s a generic welcome letter that everyone gets, but hers is personally signed off by a certain Myoui Mina, and something tells her that it is the handiwork of the girl she had met at the front desk earlier on.

Good, because she isn’t sure she can handle another disappointment. And she knows she’d be sorely disappointed if Mina hadn’t turned out to be real after all.

She makes it a point that she really should not be left alone with her thoughts. It sickens her to think that barely a week after the demise of her longest relationship, she’s already smitten with someone she’s known for a running total of less than twelve hours. Any longer and she thinks she might fall in love, or something.

Maybe now is a good time for the sun to fry her brains up again.

The sand is warm and feels powdery soft under her soles, so after minutes of walking she kicks off her sandals and lets them hang loosely off her fingers, opting instead to walk through the beach barefoot.

She takes care not to stray too close to the water. It comes and goes in waves, lapping at her toes in a rhythm of its own. She stares mindlessly into the deep blues of the ocean and lets her sight lose focus, her heavyweight thoughts blurring into a nondescript void. It’s like the gods have finally heard her prayers, she thinks, when she finally feels her worries and concern evaporate away like seawater on a hot day. Like the waters she’s observing intently with her own eyes.

Metres away from her, there’s a ball of orange that bounces across the corner of her peripheral vision. She’s distracted from the sudden weightlessness of her thoughts and tries to search for the source of the distraction.

The ball of orange turns out to be a small boy, not a day older than five years old, skipping happily along the line where the sea meets the sand.

She loves kids. Adores them. Thinks that one day she’ll adopt, since childbirth is out of the question. (She’s seen one too many videos of how the process actually goes. She’s not a fan of any part of it.)

The boy frolics in the shallow waters like it’s basically home to him, and Nayeon loses herself watching him. Not before long she’s smiling at the sight, and she thinks she must look plenty much like a creep, but thankfully no one’s watching.

Then the boy starts wading in.

At first, it’s just a few steps in and Nayeon doesn’t think much of it, but when the boy almost fully submerges his torso into the ocean she starts to get alarmed. Shouldn’t someone be appearing right about now to drag the boy out of the water? Or is this some kid who had wandered too far from his parents’ sights? Was she going to have to save the kid from potential drowning? Was this an emergency waiting to happen?

She looks around, scans the empty beach for some hint that the boy is still in safe hands. Her heart starts to grow anxious because she finds close to nothing, not even a single hint that a nearby adult is responsible for this boy.

Then there’s a hand on her shoulder, and she jumps at the touch, clearly having tensed up after watching the boy for far too long.

It’s Mina.

“Mina! Oh, thank god you’re here. This boy—”

She turns to point the boy out to her, and that’s when Nayeon realises that he’s gone.

“Oh god, oh my god…”

She throws her sandals onto the sand and makes to run into the waters, but she gets stopped by a tug on her arm.

“Mina! There’s a boy who’s drown—”

“Do you mean… This boy?”

Mina looks down at the space next to her and Nayeon’s eyes follow suit. The ball of orange from earlier is now standing next to Mina, one hand grasping Mina’s pinky tightly. He’s looking fondly at the waters still, the gentle waves licking at his toes not bothering him in the slightest. He’s wet from head to toe, orange shirt drenched through and through, and yet he looks perfectly at home, as if he’s lived his entire life in the sea. A natural.

Nayeon lets out a sigh of relief, a breath she doesn’t know she had been holding. She crouches down and looks the boy in the eye, and all the panic and worry from earlier melts away into blatant, unbridled adulation.

“God, he had me so worried there.”

She relaxes enough for a smile to light up her face, and she waves at the boy eagerly. “Hi there,” she greets.

She hears it again, Mina’s light giggle. She looks up, and while the sun is shining brightly in the backdrop, Mina’s face shines even brighter – even without the illumination.

She likes the way it looks, and thinks it’s fitting that Mina’s even brighter than the sun.

“I wouldn’t worry about him,” she says, one hand moving to comb through the boy’s wet hair. “He’s a great swimmer.” Then she crouches down too, to level with Nayeon and the boy at the same time. “Say hi,” she whispers to the boy.

The boy does as he is told and waves back to Nayeon, the hint of a smile creeping up on his face.

Nayeon feels her heart warm and cool all at once. “And you’d know that because…”

“I taught him how.” Mina pats the boy on the head lovingly. “You like kids, huh?”

“Very much so.” Nayeon lets her words sink in, then she notices something. “Wait, you…”

“Go play in the sand, okay?” Mina points the boy away from the ocean, and he nods.

“Okay, Mama!”

Mina turns back to Nayeon, and her smile is still as bright and charming as ever. Perhaps a little more now than ever before.

“I’m glad you like my son, then.”

The only thing that Nayeon really registers is how fitting it is that a girl like Mina could have a son as lovable and beautiful as him.

It just fits. Everything just fits, like the long-awaited last pieces to a puzzle.

=====

(Nayeon’s only inches short of a complete wreck at times, and she’s made many questionable choices in the past. She also has an appallingly bad track record of conversations with strangers, and a good majority of them somehow go downhill shockingly quickly.)

She opts to stay silent for a moment or two, then lets out this tiny, goofy little grin because she doesn’t know what else to say except for the first thing that’s at the top of her head.

“You look really young for a mother.”

Mina laughs that airy little giggly laughter and stands up, extending a hand to help Nayeon get up after her. Nayeon takes it, heart pounding just a tad bit faster at the thoughtful gesture, but also at the probability that she might have just offended a really nice girl with her really bad choice of words.

“I _am_ really young for a mother.”

Well, that’s definitely not a response she had expected.

(So, by Nayeon’s standards, she thinks she’s doing really well with this conversation.

She just hopes that by Mina’s standards, this conversation isn’t making her want to walk away just yet.)

Nayeon just smiles in earnest at Mina’s good-natured attempt at playing along with her shoddy attempt at a conversation starter. Mina tilts her head, lips still curled at the edges, but her eyes read of slight puzzlement.

“Your face is doing that thing… That thing that happens when people have lots of questions to ask me but can’t pick one to lead with.”

Nayeon’s expression stiffens and she covers her face in horror behind her hands. “Oh my god, I didn’t mean to stare at you all weird.”

Mina giggles. “You didn’t, it’s just something I noticed in people over time.”

If this is Mina’s attempt at trying to get her to feel less mollified about herself, it isn’t working, not in the least. Nayeon’s hands shift to cover even her eyes now, since she feels unable to even look in Mina’s direction. “I didn’t mean to hurt or offend you—”

Then she feels it. That hand that had laid on hers at the front desk countertop, that hand that she had felt on her shoulder just a couple minutes ago. It’s back, still cold to the touch on her own heated and sweaty palms, but this time it’s slowly guiding her own hands away from her face, beckoning for her to look her straight in the eye.

“You didn’t. Now ask away.”

Nayeon feels beyond bewildered now, at how nice this girl is to her. Nobody is supposed to be nice to her. It’s basic logic not to be this kind to a walking trainwreck. It’s like her guard is lowered around Nayeon, like they hadn’t just met barely hours ago, and worst of all, like she’s already trusting Nayeon even when the latter doesn’t trust herself, at all.

“But… You barely know me. Why would you want to answer my questions?”

“Weren’t you the one who said we could be friends?”

When Nayeon still looks horrified and baffled, Mina just pretends to put some thought into their situation, before shrugging nonchalantly.

“It’s summer break, so all the partying teens are flocking to the neighbouring resorts for booze and bonfires, two of the few things I can’t provide. You’re my only guest for the next one week, short of the couple here for a _private_ honeymoon and an overworked pair of parents who look like they’d rather sleep in than spend the day with their iPad-hugging child. I think it’s safe to say I have plenty of time to get to know you, don’t you think?”

Nayeon is thoughtful for a while there, then sees how Mina hasn’t wavered in the slightest. It hits her that the girl isn’t kidding, not in the least, and this terrifies her for some reason.

“You must be kidding me.”

Mina shakes her head, blinking a few times to drill it into Nayeon’s head that no, she really isn’t. “Besides, I know enough about you to know that you’re harmless.”

The people she’s left back at home would definitely have something to say about that. She tries to ignore the resounding sounds of protest and disagreement nagging at her in the back of her head. The most she can do now is to give herself a pat on the back for putting up a stellar first impression for the girl, enough for her not to see that she’s really nothing more than a put-together emotional wreck who’s miraculously still walking on two feet.

She thinks it’s human nature that her heart feels warmed, flutters even. It’s the most kindness anyone’s shown her since the fallout.

It’s a universal truth that a break-up never just hurts one party, especially when the relationship in question is one that everyone thought had a shot at lasting. And yet that’s exactly how the world had acted, when the past three years she spent loving someone had gone down the drain in the blink of an eye, in the aftermath of one fateful, painful night.

At first, she had believed what everyone said. It had been much easier than sifting through her memories of that night, trying to make sense of what she said and what she did. She bought everyone’s stories, welcomed everyone’s brushstrokes, all of which made her out to be the monster who broke a poor girl’s heart.

Nobody really acknowledges, not even until now, that _her_ heart had been broken too.

Because nobody really understands, or could even begin to imagine, how it feels to have deluded yourself for the better part of three years, to have tried your best to convince yourself that you had finally found someone who could love you for the rest of your life, and to have, ultimately, failed to do so.

Nobody really knows how it feels to have come to the conclusion that she might indeed, after all, be undeserving of a lifelong love.

The rude awakening had come to her in an epiphany, while she had been watching her (now ex-)girlfriend pace up and down the bedroom they shared, ranting about the thousand and one other things in her life that Nayeon never really once held a candle to in terms of importance.

Nayeon had never been a priority, and worse still, she had never been much of anything to her at all.

Nayeon had never mattered, and what still breaks her heart every day is knowing that she might never matter to anyone at all, not in the way she wants to be, or in the way she deserves to be.

So – _to hell_ with anyone who thinks her heart isn’t broken. It sure as hell is, and it still stings every day.

(Maybe she truly is undeserving of anything good. Like… this kind girl with cold hands, who very sweetly thinks of her as harmless.)

There’s nothing else she can offer as a reaction, so she just shakes her head in response to Mina’s all-too-naïve statement. “You think too highly of me.”

She sees a small twinkle in the girl’s eye, like a quick flash of understanding, or empathy working its magic. It’s a muted moment of wonder, as Mina figures out what she could offer to Nayeon as comfort, steps aside and puts her boy in full view in Nayeon’s eyes.

Nayeon feels her chest surge with a sudden warmth as Mina smiles and gestures at her son.

“I think you’ll really enjoy playing with him.”

He looks over with a blindingly bright gummy smile and eyes that crinkle with the curvature of his lips. Nayeon sees Mina in the boy, and vice versa, and accepts the offer pretty easily.

After all, it’s the most kindness anyone’s shown her since the fallout.

“Thank you,” Nayeon says, and it tells of something far deeper than anything they’ve talked about.

She means it.

=====

Over the course of the next few days, Nayeon has the pleasure of being an almost-babysitter for the boy, who’s very simply and aptly named _Min_ (he’s quite literally a part of his mother, as Nayeon realises). She never strays too far from the resort since everything she could ever ask for from this short getaway could be found in the resort itself. She’s got the wondrous whites of the clouds, the baby blues of the skies, the gorgeous greens of the natural landscape and most of all, the comfort and company she hadn’t thought she could find but somehow did.

She’s laying down on a reclining beach chair, the rays of the sun painting whatever skin is exposed a beautiful shade of burned. She takes in the glow, the warmth, and keeps her eyes trained on Min, who’s building sandcastles again. He really likes it, for some reason, and Nayeon thinks that she’s formed enough of a rapport with the boy to ask.

“Min,” she calls out. The boy looks up, his round hazels that look a lot like his mother’s staring right into Nayeon’s. “Why do you like building sandcastles so much?”

“I’m building a home. For me and my mother!”

He points at two little lumps standing next to the sandcastle, one big and one small. Then as if on cue, he builds another one of similar size to the bigger one.

“Auntie can stay with us too.”

Her heart swells. She doesn’t have the time to even dream about the beautiful outcome before she gets jolted out of her thoughts by the presence of someone new.

“That’s a great idea,” a voice comes from behind her. She turns around to find Mina on the beach chair next to hers, having quietly laid down while Nayeon had been talking to Min.

Nayeon wants to ask her if she means it, wants to ask if she really thinks it’s as good of an idea as it sounds. Wants to ask if she knows what it means to her. But she doesn’t.

“For someone running this place on her own, you seem to be awfully free.” She settles on that as a fitting response.

Mina nods, turning her attention away from the boy. “I’m efficient, and like I told you, I don’t have many guests.”

“Business is good though, right?”

Mina seems to find that humorous for some reason and laughs that little laugh of hers. “We’re not shutting down just yet, no.”

“Isn’t it difficult? You’re all on your own.”

“Who says I am?” She points at the sandcastle-building boy. She smiles and goes to join him in the sand. “He’s the only reason I need to get up and keep going.”

Nayeon’s not a mother, nor does she think she understands how mothers think, at least not yet. But she’s seen the way Min hovers around Mina when she goes about doing her duties and suffice to say she’s seen enough. The boy literally drives his mother to keep doing what she does. She’s young, but only in the physical sense of the word. She’s so much more than what she seems to be.

She’s not an open book, her pages are hard to flip, but Nayeon doesn’t find it all that exhausting to keep trying to figure her out.

“It’d be nice, you know. If I had a reason like that of my own.”

“You’ll find one.”

 _Easier said than done,_ Nayeon thinks to herself a little wilfully.

“Want to come over later tonight?”

Nayeon’s eyes had fluttered shut from the sunrays beating down mercilessly at her, but Mina’s words had her sitting up, awake and a little bothered all in the blink of an eye.

She’s stammering, sputtering out words that form a largely incoherent sentence. “I—you—what?”

There’s an amused expression on Mina, the one with arched brows and a cheeky grin, the one she sometimes has whenever Nayeon says or does something a little weird or true to her character. It’s beyond clear Mina thinks this is amusing, hilarious even, more so than the other girl does. “I’m cooking dinner. I thought you might appreciate some homecooked food.”

Nayeon’s pulse stills. “Oh. I, uh, I’d rather not bother you. I can always get food from—”

“—the restaurant opposite our place?” Mina shrugs. “The lady’s been telling me you keep getting takeout there.”

“Like it’s a bad thing? I’m giving her business, am I not?”

“She’s concerned, is all. She says you look like you could use a nice, warm meal that doesn’t contain an alarming amount of MSG.”

“Do I have heartbreak written all over my face or something?”

“Less than when we first met.”

(It’s only been days. Nayeon wants to give all the credit to Mina.)

Mina tilts her head, has this puppy-eyed look.

There’s not a lot of things Nayeon’s acknowledged openly as her weaknesses, but this look of Mina’s is going on the list.

“So?”

Nayeon’s eyes glances over at the three lumps still standing upright beside the sandcastle, then at Min still quietly expanding his future home. The same home he’s invited Nayeon to live in.

It’s a cute fantasy, one that isn’t going to ever come true, so Nayeon decides to take up the girl’s offer. It’s the best she can do, anyway.

“I’ll be there.”

=====

Mina’s place is one of the smaller cabins in her resort that she’s claimed as her own. It’s done up simply, a humble and cosy abode with just enough space for two.

Nayeon had offered to help with the cooking, but eventually both she and Mina had decided that it would’ve been best for all of them if Mina had done the cooking herself. Nayeon settles with doing the washing and promising to leave a 5-star review on the resort’s website.

Now she’s seated on Mina’s couch, trying and failing to sneak glances at the side profile of the girl in the kitchen. Mina glances over from time to time, smiling that smile of hers and melting Nayeon’s insides at the same time. The latter decides she needs a distraction of _any_ sort before she loses it and walks over to tell Mina to stop being this pretty, so she gets up and heads for the display table beneath the television. It houses photographs, all framed up uniquely, and a few awards from some international ballet competitions. Huh.

She stares at the photographs first, taking in the few that showed the matching gummy smiles that Mina and the boy share. It’s cute that she has this many photos of the two together, displayed for the world to see.

The few awards that Mina had displayed tells of a part of her life she had left behind not too long ago, and Nayeon can’t help but wonder if the girl had been forced to do it or if she had done it by choice. She doesn’t plan to ask.

“Dinner’s almost ready.”

She looks up with a start, turning to find Mina staring at her from the dining table, lips curved up the slightest as she gestures at the plates she’s set out.

Dinner is a largely quiet affair, with Nayeon unsure of what to talk about (also with her thoughts largely preoccupied by the things she’d seen earlier) and Mina keeping herself occupied with feeding Min some mouthfuls of vegetables.

Nayeon thinks she wants to compliment Mina for her amazing cooking, but she misses every opportunity to do so when she just winds up glancing, perhaps with hearts in her eyes, between the mother-and-son pair.

The plates clear out rather easily. Nayeon’s appetite has either improved, or the depressing thoughts have finally decided not to play with her taste buds today. She stands up naturally, starting to stack plates and gather utensils so that she can deliver on her promise to handle the washing in return for Mina’s cooking. When Mina reaches out to help, Nayeon gently nudges her hands away.

“You should sit and play with Min. I got this.”

“You’re still a guest, you know, both in my resort and my house. I shouldn’t make you do all of it.”

Mina forces her way into helping Nayeon, mainly because of that one split-second where her hand had brushed across Nayeon’s and the latter’s brain had short-circuited too hard for her to stop Mina. Minutes later they are standing next to each other by the kitchen sink, with an overwhelming stack of things to wash.

“It must be tiring to do both, cooking and washing.”

“Not usually, actually. Honestly,” she offers a tiny toothy grin at Nayeon, “I cooked a little more today. You looked like you could use it.”

The past few days have proven to Nayeon that her heart has a specific reaction towards certain people and certain things that they do. There’s this thing her heart does whenever Mina does or says something that makes her feel like everything would turn out to be alright with this weird, wretched world. Her heart does that very same thing again.

“Thanks,” she replies quietly. Then, “I mean it.”

Nayeon distracts herself by delving into the washing, pulling plate after plate and putting them under the stream of running water. But she gets pulled right back into the conversation when Mina hums under her breath, the tune of a familiar, old-time song hanging in the air.

Even her humming sounds melodious, Nayeon thinks, stifling an eye-roll at how typical of a smitten romantic she’s being.

Then there’s a slap of reality that hits her when she remembers that it’s only been weeks, maybe a month at best, since she just broke up with her last long-term girlfriend.

Before the darkness engulfs her, Mina turns to her, a glint in her eyes. “Are you doing anything tonight?”

“No,” Nayeon chokes out. “Why?”

“I have a bottle of red wine a guest left as a gift. Figured we could use it as a post-dinner treat, if you’re up for it.”

“What about Min?”

“What about him?”

“I don’t know, don’t you have to… mother him, or something?”

Mina’s amused again, and she usually is whenever Nayeon alludes to her and motherhood in the same sentence. “I’ll read him his bedtime story and tuck him in before I break out the wine glasses. Does that sound alright to you?”

 _God, she’s serious about the red wine._ “Sorry, you’re the mother here. I forgot.”

“No, you just adore the boy to bits. Don’t worry, I think it’s cute.”

After the washing, Mina goes to run a bath for the boy. Nayeon keeps him company while Mina busies herself in the bathroom, and the boy looks up at her with those irresistible dark hazels again. “Are you staying with us tonight, Auntie?”

She doesn’t think it’s a reach to say the boy sounds a little hopeful, and the child-lover in her just cannot bring herself to disappoint him. She shakes her head, a little pout evident on her countenance, but she quickly replaces that with a smile before the boy can whip out a pout of his own. “But I won’t be too far off. I’ll just be around the corner.”

“Why are you not staying with us? Do you not want to?”

Either Mina’s trained the boy in the art of hospitality, or he’s really just toying with Nayeon’s feelings now. “Well, no, it’s not that I don’t want to. I… just… I just can’t.”

“Mama’s bed has space!”

Nayeon has to blink a few times for the world to come back into focus. She swallows and tries to find a way to answer him while fending off everything that’s coming alive in her head right now.

Then Mina comes in to save the day. Her head pops out from behind the wall, and she gestures for Min to come to her. “Come on, Min. It’s time for your bath.”

When the boy disappears into the bathroom with his mother, Nayeon spends a few minutes breathing through the little trip her mind had taken into forbidden territory. Suddenly she’s extremely thankful that it’s red wine that Mina has offered.

=====

“So – this is a typical night for you.”

Nayeon’s pouring them each a glass of wine, handling the liquor skilfully like she’s dealt with it plenty of times before. (She has. Jeongyeon exaggerates and calls it a drinking problem. She prefers to think of it a little more positively.)

“Kind of, minus the fact that I cooked for someone new. You’re special, I guess.”

Nayeon’s heart does it again.

She only smiles in response, lifting her glass and tilting it in Mina’s direction. Mina does the same and the glasses meet in a slight jingle.

They’re seated on the tiny balcony, watching the night sky and the stars that have somehow chosen tonight to visit. The past few nights, all Nayeon has had to stare at as the day winds down had been the plain, pitch black sky.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were flirting.”

Silence follows. She only realises what she’s said after she says it. She blames it on the wine.

“Well,” Mina starts, taking her first sip of the wine. (Nayeon looks at her own glass; it’s half-empty.) “The last time I flirted with girls was in high school.” Nayeon sneaks a glance over at the girl and sees a reminiscing, mischievous grin. “I wasn’t very successful.”

Oh. _Oh._ “Her loss,” Nayeon speaks up again, blinking through the flurry of thoughts revolving around Mina flirting with a girl in high school.

Mina scoffs but keeps the grin. “Not really. She’s happily attached, and highly successful to boot. You might’ve even heard of her. She’s the CEO of some entertainment company, and her girlfriend’s some famous Taiwanese celebrity too.”

“Still, her loss.” Nayeon takes another sip of her wine, hoping she hadn’t sounded too insistent with her words. _Time for some damage control._ “I just think… It’s pretty hard to do better than you.”

_What happened to damage control?_

“Why, thank you. That’s easily the sweetest thing anyone’s said to me since ‘your resort deserves nothing but 5-star reviews.’”

Slightly tipsy Mina has an odd sense of humour, but it’s a sense of humour alright. She cracks up at her own joke and this gets Nayeon to crack up too, and in no time, she’s pouring both of them another glass of wine again.

“I mean it, though. You even did _ballet_. And won awards for it! Everyone I know who’s done ballet only did it because their moms told them to. And nobody did it past age ten.”

“I’m one of a kind, huh?” Mina leans back to have a better look at the starry night sky. “But that’s a thing of the past. I stopped in college.”

Nayeon isn’t sure if she should probe, so she chooses to remain quiet. Thankfully, Mina’s in a mood to keep going. “…as with many other things I stopped doing in college.”

“Like what?”

“Like… going to college.” She sips on her wine. “Do I have to spell it out for you, or did you already figure out that that was when I got pregnant?”

Nayeon follows suit, sips on her wine too. “You don’t have to keep going, you know. If you don’t want to.”

“It’s nice talking about it once in a while.”

“I mean, if it’s akin to dredging up bad memories and it makes you feel bad, then I’d rather you… you know.”

“Am I boring you out?” Mina looks at her with a playful gaze, eyes challenging her a little. “You’d rather listen to stories of weird guests than a story about my life, huh?” She leans in towards Nayeon, jutting the wine glass in her face. “Admit it.”

_God, no._

God, Nayeon would even pay just to sit here listen to her talk about herself.

The wine’s doing things to her now, and she can’t help but to mimic the girl’s movements. So, she leans in towards Mina, eyes putting up just as intense a challenge as hers does. “I’ll decide when I’m bored.”

Mina smiles a satisfied smile, nodding along with Nayeon’s reply. “Good. I don’t know if you know this, but you make a great listener.”

She’s reminded of that last acrimonious encounter with her ex-girlfriend and how the latter had screamed in Nayeon’s face that she couldn’t even listen to save her life.

“So I’ve heard,” Nayeon says simply. “You were saying?”

“I dropped ballet, dropped out of college. Dropped my parents too, in a way. But in my head, there was really honestly no way I could go on living with them, not after they told me I was choosing an unborn baby over my dreams.” Sip of wine. “I mean, for God’s sake… The man was a doctor. He embodied everything I wanted to become, everything I was studying to become, even.” Another sip of wine. “I know, they didn’t want me to ditch everything I’d worked for. But I knew that I wanted to save lives someday. And I knew I had to start with the one inside me. So… I left.”

“You left?”

“Packed my bags, left to live with an aunt of mine. They kept tabs on me through her, and I knew just as much. But I haven’t seen them since then.”

“Haven’t they asked to see you?”

“They have. When I had the kid, they came to the hospital. But I said no. Figured I’d only see them when I was ready to, when I could finally say I’m happy with the way my life turned out. It’s not that I’m not happy now. I just… think there’s something missing. Like there’s something else out there I need to find.”

There’s this faraway look in Mina’s eye that Nayeon thinks she can understand a bit of. She thinks she’s looking for the same missing piece. “Does it ever get lonely for you? I mean, you dealt with all of this alone…”

“Alone? I wasn’t ever alone.”

“I mean, apart from the boy.”

Mina smiles, and it comes out looking a little more mysterious than Nayeon thinks it would. “I wasn’t always alone. Min’s father didn’t run away, if that’s what you were thinking.”

Oh. “I, uh.” She looks away apologetically. “Sorry, I got it wrong.”

“He’s a sweet guy. And we really tried to make it work, the both of us. But things happened, and we decided to go our separate ways. He’s happily married now, and we still keep in touch for Min’s sake. He’s one of my best friends.”

“Sorry,” Nayeon tries again, though Mina had barely sounded perturbed at Nayeon’s misconception. “It’s kind of my thing to jump straight to the worst possible outcome.”

“You don’t have to apologise for that, you know. It’s an easy misconception.”

“I think I do. I’ve been working on trying to be more positive and that just… wasn’t it. This trip, it’s not me running away from my problems like what my best friend’s been telling me. I’m trying to do a little bit of detox, spend some time away from the life that I’ve been living all this while, in hopes that I’ll see things a little bit clearer.”

“I think you’re brave, and I’m glad that Min and I have been part of your journey so far. It’s not easy to have embarked on it alone.”

“I’m glad I’m not alone now, too.”

It’s only now when she realises that she’s barely an inch away from Mina, wine glasses left long forgotten between them.

There’s a momentary bout of eye contact before they both lean away to go back to admiring the stars hanging in the night sky.

Someone had once told her that love is a momentary thing; not in the sense of how long it lasts but how long it takes for one to realise that yes, it just might be love after all.

She’s not an optimist; she’s not quite there yet. But she’ll have to start somewhere, and if this is the first leap of faith she’ll take, then so be it.

This is the moment when she realises that yes, this just might be love after all.

**Author's Note:**

> part 2, coming right up


End file.
